penalty

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. A punishment established by law or authority for a crime or offense.

n. Something, especially a sum of money, required as a forfeit for an offense.

n. The disadvantage or painful consequences resulting from an action or condition: neglected his health and paid the penalty.

n. Sports A punishment, handicap, or loss of advantage imposed on a team or competitor for infraction of a rule.

n. Sports An infraction of a rule; a foul.

n. Games Points scored in contract bridge by the opponents when the declarer fails to make a bid. Often used in the plural.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. A legal sentence.

n. A punishment for violating rules of procedure.

n. A payment forfeited for an early withdrawal from an account or an investment.

n. A direct free kick from the penalty spot, taken after a defensive foul in the penalty box.

n. A punishment for an infraction of the rules, often in the form of being removed from play for a specified amount of time.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. Penal retribution; punishment for crime or offense; the suffering in person or property which is annexed by law or judicial decision to the commission of a crime, offense, or trespass.

n. The suffering, or the sum to be forfeited, to which a person subjects himself by covenant or agreement, in case of nonfulfillment of stipulations; forfeiture; fine.

n. A handicap.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

n. Suffering, in person or property, as a punishment annexed by law or judicial decision to a violation of law; penal retribution.

n. The loss or burden to which a person subjects himself by covenant or agreement in ease of the non-fulfilment of an obligation; the forfeiture or sum to be forfeited for non-payment, or for non-compliance with an agreement: as, the penalty stipulated in a bond.

n. Money recoverable by virtue of a penal statute; a fine; a mulct.

n. Hence The painful consequences which follow some particular course of action, or are invariably attached to some state or condition: as, the penalty of carelessness, or of riches; he paid the penalty of his rashness.

Examples

If you keep an ounce on hand so you do not have to constantly be seeking the criminal element to make regular purchases the penalty is the same for up to 3 kilos, might as well keep a couple bricks and not have to make a purchase for a couple years.

Steven J. Willis and Nakku Chung of the University of Florida have a forthcoming article in Tax Notes in which they argue that if the penalty is a tax, it is a “direct tax” for purposes of Article I, section 9 and is therefore unconstitutional.

The majority opinion in Friday's Court of Appeals case effectively argues that Congress, by trying to reduce the role of government when compared with that model and, it must be admitted, being too cute in using the word "penalty" to describe what plainly operates in fact as a tax on individuals who do not buy their own insurance, somehow converted a constitutional law into an unconstitutional assertion of a novel authority.